I have no doubt the artist tried to make it look action packed (whether the boobs are supposed to be in the centerpiece is debatable) but unless we see her whole body and thus know what she's doing, it still looks a little silly. I think the image would've been more logical if the artist had shown the whole pose. I'm sure that if you took Batman doing whatever action-y moment in a comic book and cut his body in half it would look superweird.

Ok at no one in particular, why is no one looking up pictures of Skyrim?

That pose she's taking is pretty much a "standard" pose of characters releasing the dragons roar.

I could be wrong, but I believe the pose has nothing to do with physics or boobs or whether or not she's going to fall on her face, despite the translation of fus ro dah being "force balance push".

It's about evoking the spirit and power of a dragon, the arms back are like wings being spread. Like I said elsewhere, this is something that seems kind of derivative, but in this case, since it's a quickly done satirical doodle and not a professionally sponsored piece, derivative is kind of expected._________________...if a single leaf holds the eye, it will be as if the remaining leaves were not there.http://about.me/omardrake

The eye is drawn along by the boobs toward the other character. Her boobs are the centerpiece of the picture. Boobs.

The center of the picture isn't the "center" of the picture. As in, it isn't necessarily the focal point.

It's funny how I said centerpiece, which is another way of saying focus. As in "Her boobs are the focus of the picture.". Centerpiece is a neat word. It can also mean anchor, as in, "The foundation of this picture is her boobs" - meaning the picture falls apart without her boobs.

I'm not sure why you're being so adamant about this, because honestly I'm not seeing it at all._________________butts

I have no doubt the artist tried to make it look action packed (whether the boobs are supposed to be in the centerpiece is debatable) but unless we see her whole body and thus know what she's doing, it still looks a little silly. I think the image would've been more logical if the artist had shown the whole pose.

I don't. The legs would basically add a whole bunch of nothing and take up enormous space while doing it, ruining the tight composition. The reason she's leaning that way is because it's visually interesting and indicates motion. This is often done in comics because a balanced figure implies being stationary, and stationary is boring unless you've got something else going on. Black Bolt is stationary and balanced here, because that serves the joke; he's unimpressed. This isn't about realism, it's about manipulating the reader's interpretations to hack movement into a fundamentally static medium. This goes on all the time without any ulterior motive besides serving the function of making you think things are moving.

stripeypants wrote:

WheelsOfConfusion wrote:

stripeypants wrote:

The eye is drawn along by the boobs toward the other character. Her boobs are the centerpiece of the picture. Boobs.

The center of the picture isn't the "center" of the picture. As in, it isn't necessarily the focal point.

It's funny how I said centerpiece, which is another way of saying focus. As in "Her boobs are the focus of the picture."

Which they aren't. That's not what the composition here is doing.

Quote:

Centerpiece is a neat word. It can also mean anchor, as in, "The foundation of this picture is her boobs" - meaning the picture falls apart without her boobs.

Which isn't true. Replace Black Canary with Banshee (who is a dude) in the same pose and the effect is the same. Clearly neither the joke nor the visual language of the picture itself hinges on dangling breasts. Is the fact that we're looking at black Canary instead of Banshee also an indictment of subconscious sexism? Maybe, but then again maybe it's just another one of those "nerd layers" the artist talked about to have characters from different comic universes as well as a videogame reference.

But fuck, what the Hell do I know about comics and illustration, right? It's not like I've been backing up everything I say with well-worn professional wisdom and links to examples and explanations! It's not like my position is based on the structure of sequential art and its use as a visual medium of communication.

Nope, clearly my knowledge here is purely superficial and the real reason the picture exists as-is is basically because boobs. We can dismiss it without any further thought or analysis because hey, if somebody is drawn off-balance it can't serve any purpose other than to highlight secondary sexual characteristics.

I'm just working backwards from knowledge of human anatomy. If she's supposed to be projecting power, she isn't. Her body is poorly positioned to do anything powerful (breathe, scream, punch, walk, run [shit in that position she can't even really move her head; try it]). She should be in that standard starting stance martial arts people and footballers seem to like, with her knees under her and feet shoulder width apart, and leaned forward (even babies do this when they cry, because of the mechanical advantage). The fact that she's basically the exact opposite (I'm guessing on the legs - it looks like the artist drew the landmark of the greater trochanter, and its position implies her right leg is extended back) conveys weakness to me, because she's physiologically incapable of producing as much effort in that pose.

So, if her body isn't positioned to produce strength, what's it positioned for? Well, leaning into the blast of her voice, maybe, but is there canonical evidence to support this? If so, my only problem is that she's poorly positioned to breathe. Is there evidence she doesn't use air to produce screams?

I get that the picture is supposed to look "dynamic" but it also manages to place her in a vulnerable position. So, as artists, are there other dynamic poses she could have been in that would not be so vulnerable (to being pushed over, to spinal cord injury [hit from behind], to dislocated shoulders, to falling on one's face, etc)? If not, why not? If so, why pick the one that's both weak and boob-forward?_________________"Worse comes to worst, my people come first, but my tribe lives on every country on earth. Iíll do anything to protect them from hurt, the human race is what I serve." - Baba Brinkman

Alright, it looks like the site's technical problems chucked a bunch of this argument (including my explosion and all the stuff leading up to/responding to it) down the memory hole just as I was feeling like wading into this shitstorm again. I had to step away from it for a while because it was angrying up the blood too much, then the forum kept crashing for the last few days, and now a bunch of things I wanted to re-read and reply to are just gone. Figures.

I'll understand if nobody wants to go and pick up the argument again, especially with the ugliest half of the previous material missing. I do want to get something off my chest though. Here's what drew me into the thing in the first place:

I took this as a judgment on the artistic integrity and intent of the piece, and tried to engage it on that level. But why did it bother me so much? Because that's not an accusation to be tossed around lightly, if sexism in comics is supposed to be a serious issue. Like I said before, Nebezial is cut from a different cloth than the schmucks whose work typically falls into EG's scalding cauldron of righteous critique. He's not some Rob Liefeld or J. Scott Campbell who can't draw women except as spineless twigs with misshapen limbs and anti-gravity fields emanating from their chest balloons. He's not one of those hacks who can't ground women in a scene without said field making them float around as if in space, or tip-toeing around on ballet-toes, or who always renders women in shrinking violet poses as they powerlessly wilt in the face of danger just to be rescued by some guy. In fact, a search for "Nebezial" on EG only turns up posts for praise. As far as depictions of women in comics goes, he's one of the artists that gets it. And he can go into a rant about it on a more than superficial level, because he doesn't just stop at one set of assumptions. Hence I get a little miffed when somebody who gets the 'Doing It Right' tag on EG gets casually tossed in with together with the Liefelds and the Campbells, whose whole bodies of work consist of one long trainwreck of terribleness and flimsy cheesecake. That's just plain irresponsible.

So yes, it's kind of upsetting when I catch ignorant (even flippant) bashing of artists who don't actually seem to deserve it. This is why I suggested that, just perhaps, you guys were maybe possibly being a bit overzealous and short-sighted in writing the picture off as an excuse for boobage. It was a shallow conclusion, pretending to depths it didn't possess, but it's still a specific condemnation against somebody. Name-dropping Escher Girls is not sufficient to show that you understand the issue deeply enough to make the call, and it should be your last resort to be used once you have the facts, rather than one of convenience.

I'm sure if you dug, you could find something of his that might be Escher Girls worthy (especially if it was commercial material and some editor had final say on it, etc.), but the point is that you'd have to dig. And in doing so you'd have to wade through all the material that goes in the complete opposite direction. For the reasons I went into before (and some I would elaborate on even more if anybody wants to take this up again), I seriously don' think this one qualifies as EG material and I don't think anybody's made a strong enough case to justify the remark. I'm not even convinced the anatomy is "bad" in the first place, but even if we accept that is I think there are better, more likely explanations for it than just boobage.

There was a lot of stuff said both ways that I can't reference or re-examine anymore, and it may not be coming back after the technical problems are fixed for good. So if nobody wants to take this up again, fine by me. If we want to take it from the top and just go from here, that's fine too. If anybody wants a chance to repeat how much of a huge obnoxious know-it-all blowhard jerk I am, have at it.

In the meantime, here are some random images.
Best Halloween Costume Ever:

I took this as a judgment on the artistic integrity and intent of the piece, and tried to engage it on that level. But why did it bother me so much? Because that's not an accusation to be tossed around lightly, if sexism in comics is supposed to be a serious issue.

I don't think the observation necessarily is one about integrity or intent. If anything one of the main problems of sexism is the unconscious sexism people engage in. I don't think anyone really believes that most artists actively try to be sexist. Rather the issue seems to be that people unconsciously copy certain styles that are actually sexist if you think about it for a while._________________

Sinfest is the cool place to hang out? You can find most of the cool people there? At Sinfest you can just chill and do whatever and totally relax. "Take it easy" is the Sinfest motto, for example, that's how laid back it is there. Show up if you want to have a good time? Another good reason to show up is if you want to hang out with friends?

Nice, especially the Lego skeleton minion. I'm assuming you made it yourself?_________________...if a single leaf holds the eye, it will be as if the remaining leaves were not there.http://about.me/omardrake

Wheels, you were a butt unnecessarily, with your trumped up announcement that everyone else here is trained to see sexism everywhere while you are a special snowflake untouched by partisanship. You launched very defensively into that after people gave their opinion. You ignored the fact there are other artists here who were looking at it with their art brains. That was dumb. I would have simply ignored the picture if you hadn't done that._________________[Stripeypants has enabled lurk mode.]

I'm not really interested in discussing the picture anymore. I gave detailed explanations of why the anatomy was bad (even told how you could see it yourself at home), and was dubbed superficial and unconvincing. So, I'll take my little red wagon filled with years of college education in human anatomy and physiology and go home. I don't need to have a conversation in which my expertise is questioned merely because it's inconvenient._________________"Worse comes to worst, my people come first, but my tribe lives on every country on earth. Iíll do anything to protect them from hurt, the human race is what I serve." - Baba Brinkman